A tempest

As I sit at my desk, I see my screen wobbling. The house too, perched on stilts down the side of a hill, is swaying somewhat. It all feels a little as if I’m on a boat, when you first step from solid ground to something that has been cast adrift. It’s a feeling I’m familiar with, living in wild Wellington, where we don’t take solid ground completely for granted.

On normal days, I might suspect an earthquake. But actually, earthquakes are relatively rare compared to the gale force winds that are shaking me today. The wind is roaring through the trees, and the rain on the roof is coming and going. It’s like this all over the country, as even in Auckland the Harbour Bridge has been temporarily closed due to wind gusts. But here in windy Wellington, we’re familiar with the gales.

Even then, the last few days have been quite extreme. We’ve had rain and hail, and just up the coast there have been several mini-but-still-destructive tornados. We have occasional moments of regular breezes and relative quiet, interspersed with wild gusts and downpours. It’s the unpredictability I dislike. A good storm that lasts a day or so can be comforting, inviting you to hunker down with a good book or a binge-worthy series, brew lots of cups of tea or coffee, and eat comfort food and drink red wine before going to bed with the sound of rain on the roof. It’s one of the things I enjoy about winter. But not this week.

One of the things I like least about Wellington is trying to sleep in extreme wind. I like in my cosy bed, listening to the elements, which is all very nice. But the wind pounds the house. It feels as if the roof will lift, and when a loose part rattles I cross my fingers that I won’t hear a metallic screech as it rips off, flying off across the valley and exposing us to the elements. This is not entirely an irrational fear. It is reasonably common after a storm to hear reports of a house losing its roof or part of a roof. Trampolines regularly take off, keen for adventures in new backyards. In our first house which felt the full onslaught of the northerly wind, I could hear the wind building up speed down the valley before it would slam into our house, or more particularly, our bedroom window. Occasionally, I would give up and go sleep in a bedroom at the back of the house. These days, I rarely give up, but I still have moments of anxiety as the gusts hit the house over and over and over again, each time bringing the possibility of disaster.

Wellington is unfortunately situated at the base of the North Island, on Cook Strait, a narrow stretch of water between the two islands that funnels the wind through. Cold southerlies from the Antarctic and northerlies from the subtropics whip us regularly. The rest of the country likes to joke about our wind, and yes, it can be extreme. But it’s not a permanent thing. Our recent visitors expressed delight that they were here for a week, and the weather was fine and calm. A promotion for the city some years ago established our favourite weather catchphrase: “You can’t beat Wellington on a good day.” Which is true. On a good day, when the harbour is calm and the sky is blue and the birds are singing, Wellington sparkles. The air is clear and fresh – any impurities were blown away in the last storm. You can’t beat it! But unfortunately, that does not describe today.